


a tooth through the flesh of the palm

by sugarboat



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Boot Worship, Grinding, Humiliation, M/M, Mostly-consensual Violence, Praise Kink, Weird Power Dynamics, vermin were harmed in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-06 20:49:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16840162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: Jolly cooperation yields unexpected rewards for clumsy Hunters.





	a tooth through the flesh of the palm

**Author's Note:**

> Hey remember how thirsty Valtr is for both the Hunter and murder?

The air outside of Yharnam always seemed fresher, even in the dank mildewed drear of the so-called Forbidden Woods. The wet-dog rank of the beasts was lessened here, though whether that was due to an actual lack of the things or simply a greater, more open area for them to occupy was left to debate. But even here, as a breeze rolled in across the deep chasm the Hunter stood before and stirred the surrounding leaves to quiet murmurings, the scent of blood was sharp and ever-present, and beneath it he could smell rot. A thick, sweet decay.

It was a wonder that Master Valtr had found himself so at home here, with his peculiar preoccupation with the impurity of things. The League Master spoke of vermin, the writhing, twisting things that the Hunter pulled free of the innards of beasts. The Hunter could just as easily imagine the creatures crawling between the floorboards of the dilapidated building Valtr was content to haunt. Could very nearly hear them as he stepped into the windmill. The skittering clatter of their multitudes of sharp, chitinous legs against soft wood that bent and groaned beneath the slightest weight. 

And that was all passing strange, wasn’t it? That the Hunter had never seen them before – these vermin – in all the horrific things he’d slaughtered in making his way to the woods. It was only after Valtr had elucidated on the scourge, had gifted the Hunter the League’s rune, that the Hunter began to find their thick and segmented bodies squirming between the organs and serrated flesh of the beasts he culled. 

He’d hardly known what to make of the League and its Master at first. As Valtr spoke at length about the impurities of men, and the parasites that nested inside them, turning them to filth and corruption. Still, the Hunter wasn’t about to argue against being encouraged to throw himself into the fray. If it was what he was going to do either way, he might as well get something in return besides the bone-deep satisfaction of his prey slumping into a puddle of their own blood. 

Satisfaction and the increasingly distant hope that this night might ever end. 

Thus far, however, said return had been little more than a clap on the shoulder. Valtr’s deep voice celebrating the Hunter’s kill and welcoming him with fervent glee into the covenant at large. His words had come to the Hunter’s mind on more than one occasion while he was out in the field. The rolling syllables of _confederate_ thrumming alongside the rushing stir of blood pounding through his veins. Thinking of stomachs churning as he dug his hands within a corpse and searched out the scuttling, biting thing he knew must be buried inside. 

With the moon hung low and red and bloated in the sky, unmoving against a backdrop of black night and grey clouds, it was difficult to tell how much time had passed since he’d last darkened Valtr’s doorstep. It was difficult to tell if that even mattered, on a night of the Hunt, when people kept telling the Hunter to enjoy his dream. However long it had been, it’d been time enough for the Hunter to gather a handful of Vermin, stashed away together in a jar amongst his belongings.

“Hello, Confederate,” Valtr greeted him, “How goes the Hunt, then?”

The Hunter didn’t answer as he stowed his weapons away, approaching the League’s Master slowly. 

“You’ve brought something for me,” Valtr said. The Hunter bared his teeth his teeth in what he hoped still somewhat resembled a smile. “Ah, yes, I can smell it from here – foul, rotten disease. Ripped straight from the heart of beasts, no doubt. Come then, let me see it.”

It. Perhaps the Master could tell what he’d brought along with him, but not the number. The Hunter licked his lips, missing the slick of blood that usually coated them, and reached into the lining of his leathers. Withdrew the jar – a clouded thing he’d swiped from some scholar’s destitute study or another – and lifted it one-handed. The long, sinuous shapes inside it writhed and twisted around themselves. The Hunter shook it, rattling the vermins’ carapaces against their glass prison. 

“Oh, you have been fruitful on this long night, haven’t you?” 

Difficult to parse emotions as it was through what the Hunter generously thought of as his helmet, Valtr nonetheless seemed almost excited. His posture had straightened somewhat, his fingers clenching and rolling in waves along the handle of his cane. And that edge had slipped into his tone. It shivered through the Hunter’s skin, made him think of sharp teeth sunk to the root in meat. 

“I knew it the moment you came in, Hunter. I knew you would do the League proud. And now, you know it too, don’t you? The truth of this vile night – there is nothing beyond these walls worth sparing.”

The Hunter nodded, though truthfully, he didn’t know the extent to which he agreed. Of a certainty, there was no shortage of monsters roaming this dream, and he had found himself awakened at the end of an axe or a pitchfork probed into his guts too many times to hold any hope for mercy as a viable strategy. Still, he found himself thinking with a measure of reluctance of the chapel. Its sorry collection of misplaced souls. 

“The first hunt is always the most difficult,” Valtr said. “Outsiders such as yourself and mine, yes, we don’t fully grasp the extent of it in the beginning. Hold out hope as long as you like – this city will prove itself as the fetid corpse it has always been in time enough.”

An unpleasant image, if he’d ever heard one. He had to assume that was the point. To imagine the twisting, labyrinthine streets as the bowels of some great dead beast, its citizens reduced to the wriggling masses of grave worms feasting on the rot of it. 

“Now!” Valtr stamped the end of his cane into the ground, startling the Hunter’s thoughts loose. “Come closer, and let’s dispose of these Vermin properly! Ground beneath the heel of our boot, as they are only so deserving of.” 

That at least was simple enough to agree to. The Hunter brought himself nearer and pulled the stopper free of the jar. The frantic skitter-clatter of legs within became deafening, like the Vermin within knew how close they were to freedom. He doubted they knew how close they were to death, and the Hunter dipped his hand in carefully, avoiding the worst of the protruding spines and convulsively snapping mandibles. 

Plucked between thumb and forefinger, he lifted one free of its containment. It hissed and reared in his grasp, flinging its body this way and that in aborted spirals of movement. The Hunter watched it carefully. Unable to avoid thoughts of the thing chewing its way inside a person. Remembering its thick, dark hide pearled with droplets of blood and viscera from whatever creature he had removed it from. 

It was still hissing as he dropped it to the floor, and it burst beneath his boot with a satisfying squeal. A moment of tension under his heel before it popped, splattering its contents in a great burst, blood dampening his boot and leathers nearly up to his knee. Disgusting, but satisfying, and Valtr made a deep noise of approval in his throat. A feral, rumbling manner of sound.

“Excellent, Confederate,” Valtr growled. Livened by the spill of blood, mayhap, or the sight of their work being done. “The next now, the next – these filth are dumb and blind, and know no fear; only their own hunger.” 

No sense to draw it out. The Hunter hefted another free, feeling oddly invigorated himself, plucking it by its middle. He could feel the force of its- were they muscles? Or some manner of strange hydraulics, fluids shifting and mimicking proper life. It didn’t matter, but whatever mechanism through which the creature moved it flailed, threatening to break free of his grasp. 

Could it smell the blood, too? Or sense it? It threw its body, flexing what would be its spine in any vertebrate beast, and then suddenly, it shifted in his hand. A cascading wave of its limbs, and it had turned itself, somehow, and instead of the Hunter holding it aloft, the vermin was curling itself around his fist, and in an instant, it had found purchase between a slat of his glove and his sleeve and burrowed its mandibles deep into the skin of his forearm. 

The Hunter let out a curse, loosening his grip immediately and shaking the thing free from himself. It was only after it plopped to the floor, flung away from his own body, that he realized that may have been a mistake. The creature was fleet, already skittering away while the Hunter was still gathering himself to give chase, and he thought with a sinking dread what he had coming in – of the vermin slipping between floorboards, nesting within walls, infesting the dark corners of this place one fetid creature at a time.

He went to throw himself after it and was stopped by an iron hand clamped around his forearm. Strong enough that he felt his skin and muscle pinch against bone. Felt his very bones creak beneath the pressure. It was instinct to try and wrench himself away, but he was held fast, the hand on his arm steadying both himself and the jar he still carried. Valtr, he realized, slow in the haze of adrenaline, and even as he recognized the League Master, Valtr lifted one leg and stamped the life from the fleeing vermin in one decisive motion. 

Another squeal, another pop almost drowned out by the thump of Valtr’s boot to the ground. Another spray of blood and viscera, this time across the League Master’s leg. The Hunter breathed a sigh of relief. 

Valtr released him, snatching the jar from his hand. The Hunter thought perhaps he should apologize, or commend Valtr on his quick efforts. Before he could do much more than form the idea, Valtr had turned to face him fully. Had snapped his cane up, held it by its rod, and hooked its handle across the back of Hunter’s neck, yanking him forward and to his knees in a short, violent movement. 

“That was foolishly done, Confederate,” Valtr said. “We’re meant to destroy the sources of disease and corruption of man, and here you are, threatening to help it spread. In your carelessness, you become no better than the beasts.” 

The Hunter’s heartbeat had ratcheted up, pain pulsing in his knees where they’d slammed into the floor. Burning in his arm where the thing had bitten him. He tipped his head back, eyes wide, staring at the League Master. Searching for any hint of what was to come and finding, of course, none. Valtr snapped the end of his staff into the floor, and the Hunter twitched at the sound.

“You’ve covered me in the vile stuff, too, haven’t you? I can smell the stink of its impurity from here.”

The Hunter swallowed thickly. There was something... unique, to be sure, about his current predicament, the angle presented as he gazed upwards at Valtr. It sent a kind of heat through his veins that blended with the discomfort and adrenaline already filling them. It spiked when Valtr took his cane in hand again and wedged the end of it beneath the Hunter’s chin, forcing him to further crane his neck. 

“Nothing to say for yourself, then? Perhaps that’s for the best,” Valtr said. The tip of his cane dragged down from beneath the Hunter’s jaw, tracing along his throat before it stopped in the hollow between his collarbones, just barely exposed by the neck of his leathers. “Yes, I think it best you just keep any thoughts to yourself, while you clean up this mess you’ve created.”

Valtr increased the pressure against the Hunter’s neck, slowly, digging the point of cane into his throat until he jabbed hard enough that the Hunter had to turn away and cough. The Hunter rubbed his fingers over the sore point, glaring up at the League Master with his squirming jar of insects still held in hand, back to leaning casually propped against his cane. 

“The night may be long for a Hunter, but that doesn’t mean you’ve time to waste.” 

It all felt a little unfair – being derided when he didn’t even have the slightest idea what Valtr was expecting from him. To clean up his mess? The Hunter’s eyes went from the jar to the wet stain of blood on the floor, where he’d stomped the first vermin lifeless. To Valtr’s blood-drenched pantleg, his boot still glistening with the stuff. That- that was probably it, the Hunter presumed. He dug into his pockets to find some manner of loose cloth, not caring from whence it came, and leaned forward to fulfill his task.

Only to be stopped short by that cane coming down onto the back of his hand, pinning it to floor. The Hunter snarled, but jerking at his hand only succeeded in having the cane ground harsher against it, his fingers clutching and scrambling at the hard wood below. 

“I know your type,” Valtr said, voice low and strangely frenetic. “Oh yes. A Hunter such as yourself knows better than to waste good blood, don’t you? And those beasts you pulled this filth from had all the blood you crave.” 

The Hunter stared, uncomprehending, half bowled over from the throbbing ache in his hand, eyes flicking between the flat, slate grey of Valtr’s helm and the red-black glisten of his blood wetted boot. 

“Going to make me tell you twice, are you?” Valtr demanded. He slid his boot along the floor, bringing it closer to the Hunter. “Lick the blood you’ve rightfully earned off my boot, Confederate, and balance the debt you’ve accrued.” 

A shudder wracked dreadfully along his spine, the Hunter’s first instinct to balk at his task. He wondered what would happen if he did. And shamefully, his found his gums tingling, mouth salivating at the thought of blood, fresh and bright on his tongue again. 

Not that this blood was that at all. It smelled like something left too long in the sun, like the blood he found bloated corpses crusted to the streets with. Pungent and bitter, too sweet at its back end, and his stomach dropped and clenched and twisted on itself as he found he wanted it all the same. Valtr had yet to remove his cane from his hand, either, leaning more and more weight upon the trapped appendage. 

“Have I so overestimated your abilities, Hunter? You’re to serve your fellow confederates, or are you so lost already that slaughter is all you know?” 

The Hunter gazed upwards again, full of ire and spite and sickly twisting heat. He placed his free hand palm flat on the ground and dipped himself forward, on hands and knees before the League Master. And once there, he lowered himself further. Brine and sugar flooding his senses. Taking a moment to wonder if he was really choosing to debase himself in such a manner – to wonder if this wasn’t just another dream – before opening his mouth and pressing his tongue to the toe of Valtr’s boot, forcing himself closer even as the bulk of his mind screamed at him to pull away. Licking a long, solitary stroke across the curve of his boot and along its side, gathering up fetid, rotted blood and all else into his mouth as he did so. 

“Very good,” Valtr said, and that, too, seared through the Hunter like bolts, setting his muscles to a clenching roll. “Keep going; you’re hardly done so soon.” 

He took a deep breath, trying to ignore the earthy and bitter tastes fouling his mouth, dampening the bright song of the blood. It wasn’t just that the vermin’s blood was twice removed from its source, sat spoiling inside its body for the church only knew how long. Valtr’s boots were hardly clean to begin with, a layer of dirt turning the blood thick as it dissolved, and the Hunter was loath to think on the possibilities of all that might be accumulated upon their surface. 

Even so, his face flushed with shame and worse, the Hunter lapped at Valtr’s boot again, and groaned deep in his throat at the approving encouragement the League Master provided as he continued. He traced the smooth surface beneath his tongue, over the top curve of Valtr’s boot, strokes that became firmer, surer as he continued. As he shuddered, his stomach clamping upon itself and threatening upheaval, and felt his pulse quickened by more than just disgust. 

Again, and again, until he tasted sour filth and then the neutral salt of leather. The Hunter moved to shift back, perhaps even to stand himself up, but Valtr’s weight on the cane, into his hand, grew greater and greater, easing only when the Hunter returned to his task, licking now along the sides of his boot. Then tracing the groove of the welt, digging into the texture of it. 

He pulled back in revulsion only once, when a still twitching limb of the vermin caught upon his tongue. Valtr lifted the cane – a great, rushing relief, expunged quickly as the League Master slammed his weapon back down and the Hunter heard a sharp crack from his own palm. Hardly an unfamiliar sensation, either, pain immediately bright and fierce, radiant as a starburst from whichever fine bone had been snapped. Familiarity did little to ease the agony of it. 

“You’ll finish, Confederate,” Valtr growled, “When I say you’ve finished.”

Valtr twisted the cane while the Hunter jerked at his feet, tore between ripping his hand away from the input and holding it steady for fear of worsened injury. The Hunter nodded his mindless agreement, and pressed his mouth to the League Master’s boot again, working at it with lips and tongue and teeth, until-

“All right, all right,” Valtr relented, and finally removed his staff entirely. The Hunter remained hunched but pulled his hand to his chest, cradling it close. “I think you’ve done well enough for now. Eager for it, with the proper motivation. That’s always the key; the proper motivation.” 

The handle of Valtr’s cane found his chin, and tilted his face upwards to meet his eye. The Hunter knew he was flushed, breath coming short, and fast. He felt entirely disheveled for all that he himself had remained so untouched, and whatever Valtr saw in him prompted one of those curling, twisting laughs. 

“Yes, yes, such a good Hunter, aren’t you? Exactly what you’ve been designed for. Blood drunk, and I bet you want more, don’t you? The night is yet young. And you still have vermin to crush and stamp out here.” 

With that, Valtr tipped the jar to its side, and shivered its contents gently in hand. Until one of the bending, twining bugs fell out of its lip to a heap upon the floor, close to the Hunter’s form. Valtr was quick to right the jar again, and the Hunter was quick to lunge for the creature, determined to prove he had learned from his mistake. He caught it readily enough – stupidly with the hand Valtr hand already cracked, but he clenched his fist tight around the writhing vermin regardless, refusing to let it slip free and spread its disease, pinning it in place to the floorboards.

The Hunter wondered if he could squeeze it hard enough to pop and spill its insides over his gloved hand. The thought was interrupted by Valtr clearing his throat.

“Nicely caught, Confederate!” There was the tone of voice the Hunter had grown more familiar with, as Valtr shared in his accomplishments. “Now, allow me.” 

And then Valtr lifted his boot - everything registering too late for the Hunter to move – and brought it down heavy and hard, on the vermin and the Hunter’s hand alike. He didn’t hear the sound it made, this time, though he still saw the bright arterial spray of its blood and felt a distant dismay, at his work being undone. 

The Hunter’s more immediate concerns involved the pulsating, white-hot pain that shot out from his hand, blinding his senses to all but the experience of it. Sharp, and endless, a flat plateau that rose higher and higher in a ragged crescendo, any twitch of his fingers strumming new chords of agony into its pealing wail. 

It eventually tapered off to a more bearable level. His hand felt hot and bloated, as if spikes were being driven through his flesh and bone with every pulse of his heart. Trapping blood and spilled fluids within it, stretching the skin to taut obscenity. Though when he dared to glance at his hand, it looked barely swelled at all, three of his fingers jutted out at the wrong angles and the knuckles of his hand oddly mashed. 

The Hunter stared at it, sickened and repulsed, and then laughed, a sound that echoed unhinged within his own ears. He couldn’t stop himself, even as the sole of Valtr’s boot found his shoulder and kicked, sending him sprawling to his backside. 

“You’re even further gone than I’d imagined. What a pity, truly.” Valtr stood above him, and planted his foot firmly against the Hunter’s sternum. “Perhaps it’s time for you to end this bloodied dream? Just until you awake again.” 

The League Master leaned his weight upon the Hunter, ground the heel of his boot into the hard bone cage of his chest. 

“But let it not be said that the League does not grant its fellow their just rewards, hmm? No, I shall not let you go empty handed.” 

The pressure on his chest felt just shy of collapsing it inwards. The Hunter swore he could feel his heart hitting against the lathes of his rib with every beat. And still, even with pain still shivering through his nerve endings, the fear of death looming like a thick black shadow overhead – even so, there was heat and fire alive within him, and he twisted beneath the weight holding him down. 

How could it be so intoxicating? This submission that all else failed to instill, the expectation of obedience, of diligence, seeping like silt to the basin of his being. The Hunter could fight this – he knew that he could, had thrown himself countless times into the same battle, the dream unending – but he found himself strangely without the will to do so. And when Valtr shifted so his boot heel rested upon the Hunter’s clavicles, and presented the sole of it to his mouth, the Hunter let his tongue slip free and lap at the filth before him. 

“Do remember to come back, won’t you? Before the night ends.” 

The League Master lifted his shoe, and the Hunter had a moment to wonder if this was over. It felt strangely anticlimactic, in a way that he knew he should rightfully feel grateful towards. Disappointment was not the appropriate response. 

It was quick to fade, as he felt a vermin drop onto his sternum, and he had half of a second to feel his heart seize in panic, the air trap itself in his lungs, before Valtr had brought his boot down upon him again, and crushed the thing to death against his chest. 

That sharp pain again, but now he wondered if his heart would truly stop, and had barely enough time to consider the possibility before another writhing insect had landed on his chest, and he heard himself protest from a great distance away – and heard, somehow much more clearly, Valtr’s voice soothing him to silence. And that boot stomping down on him again, a crack that felt like it jarred something loose inside him, and jarred himself loose, as well, floating on the cresting sparks of hurt as they pulsed and pounded through his body.

The League Master didn’t take his boot away this time. He dragged it down the Hunter’s body, as if he was wiping the filth from it onto his leathers. But that didn’t make sense, of course – that was what the Hunter’s mouth was for, after all. The toe of it dug painfully into his abdomen, then the basin between his hips, pressing on tender organs held close to the surface, and down, farther down, to-

“Oh, Hunter,” Valtr rumbled. He hardly sounded displeased at all, as he pressed the sole of his boot against the length of the Hunter’s hard cock in his breeches. “You have blessed the League with your presence.” 

The Hunter whimpered, his hips twitching upwards without his say. He reached for Valtr when he pulled away again, but it was merely so he could aim lower, bouncing the toe of boot into the Hunter’s balls with just enough force to leave him winded, and wounded, his stomach swooping with dread and all of it winding tight between his hips, at the base of his cock that pulsed and leaked. 

“Go on, then,” Valtr said. “You’re being rewarded, so take it.” 

And the Hunter did. Rutting himself shamelessly against the sole of the League Master's boot, his left hand clutching and scrambling at it, grasping onto it as if he feared the removal of it yet again. His right mangled and broken and throbbing to his heartbeat, to the heat in his groin, aching with the rise of tension going taut, and taut, and taut-

The Hunter came with a long, low groan, spilling into his own clothes. Shivering in the blissful aftermath that had only faded at its very edges when he heard the sound of a blade being unsheathed, and the gurgle his own throat made as a knife was shoved through its center.


End file.
